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The days and weeks of screwed-up smiles and laboured courtesy, the mock geniality, the hearty shake of the filthy hand, the chuckling reply that must be made to the coarse joke, the loathsome, choking compliment that must be paid to the grimy wife and sluttish daughter, the indispensable flattery of the vilest religious prejudices, the wholesale deglutition of hypocritical pledges.

— Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

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More quotes by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.

First-rate men will not canvass mobs; and if they did, the mobs would not elect the first-rate men.

Conflict in free states is the law of life.

You may roughly divide the nations of the world as the living and the dying.

War is righteous or unrighteous according as it is opportune or inopportune.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.